live blog
Two people were injured in a car attack on a shopping street in Jerusalem. The director of Israel’s military intelligence has resigned. The developments in the live blog.
According to Israeli police, three pedestrians were injured in a car attack in Jerusalem. After the two alleged perpetrators drove around the group, they got out of the car and unsuccessfully tried to open fire with a weapon. They reportedly fled and were later arrested. The police spoke of a terrorist attack.
The incident occurred near the main train station in the northwest of the city. The motive and identity of the alleged perpetrators were initially unclear. According to emergency services, two people were taken to hospital for treatment after the attack, including a young man with a head injury.
According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the Middle East conflict has a significant impact on the security situation in Germany. “The latent danger of Islamist-motivated attacks has increased as a result of the events in the Middle East,” explained BfV President Thomas Haldenwang.
He was concerned about “the danger of highly emotional people” who could be “motivated” to carry out attacks as a result of events in the Middle East. Haldenwang spoke here of “soft targets”, i.e. easily accessible public events.
The director of Israel’s military intelligence, Aharon Haliva, has resigned over mistakes related to the major Hamas attack on October 7. This was announced by the Israeli military. Haliva is the first senior Israeli official to resign because of the major attack that killed 1,200 people.
Haliva said shortly after the attack in October that he was to blame for failing to prevent the attack. An Israeli military statement said the chief of staff accepted Haliva’s request to resign and thanked him for his service. He will continue to serve in his office until a successor is found.
Gray areas: Built-up areas in the Gaza Strip, hatching: Israeli army
The Federal Government’s Human Rights Commissioner, Luise Amtberg, warns that after the Iranian attack on Israel, the “catastrophic situation of the people” in the Gaza Strip should not be lost sight of. “The people there urgently need more humanitarian aid and access to this aid,” Amtberg told the “Rheinische Post”.
Humanitarian helpers must be protected and promises for more help must be implemented quickly. There is also a need for a humanitarian ceasefire “that leads to a sustainable ceasefire,” said the Green politician.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to pay a state visit to Iraq on Monday. The focus will be particularly on discussions on “investment, trade, security aspects of cooperation between the two countries, water management and water resources,” said the Iraqi head of government’s foreign policy advisor, Farhad Alaaldin, to the AFP news agency.
Accordingly, several bilateral declarations of intent are to be signed. Among other things, the division of water resources is a point of contention. Baghdad criticizes Turkey’s construction of dams on the shared Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which have exacerbated water shortages in Iraq. Turkey also repeatedly intervenes militarily in its neighboring country to take action against fighters from the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Israeli government has called on the US to reconsider its apparent plans to sanction an Israeli military battalion. Sanctioning the largely ultra-Orthodox battalion would not only damage Israel’s international legitimacy in the fight against Hamas, but there would also be no justification for the US to do so, said Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, as quoted by the Times of Israel Gantz’s office reported. All military units are subject to the army’s code of conduct in accordance with international law.
The US news portal Axios, citing three people familiar with the matter, reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to announce sanctions against a battalion of the Israeli Defense Forces over human rights violations in the West Bank in the next few days. It would be the first time that the US has imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the intention as a “peak of absurdity” and a “moral low point”.
The federal government has hardly approved exports of military weapons to Israel since the beginning of the year. Deliveries for 32,449 euros were permitted until April 10, as the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced at the request of MP Sevim Dagdelen from the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). In addition, there are deliveries of other military equipment worth 10.03 million euros.
For comparison: Last year, the federal government gave the green light to arms exports worth 326.5 million euros to Israel – ten times as much as the previous year. These included war weapons worth 20.1 million euros, including 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons and 500,000 rounds of ammunition for machine guns, submachine guns or other fully or semi-automatic firearms. Most of it was approved after the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.
The US admits the destruction of a rocket launcher following reports of an attack near a military base in Syria. A coalition fighter jet bombed the rocket launcher in self-defense, a US official said. There were no injuries on the American side.
Iraq had previously reported the firing of five rockets from the back of a delivery truck in the border town of Zumar at the US base in Syria.
The Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia in Iraq says it is determined to resume attacks on US forces in the country. A visit by the Iraqi prime minister to Washington brought little progress in talks about a withdrawal of US troops, says Kataib Hezbollah.
“What happened recently is just the beginning,” the group explains, apparently referring to a multiple missile attack from northern Iraq on a US military base in Syria.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by the Palestinian and Israeli conflict parties cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
According to Iraqi sources, at least five rockets were fired from the Iraqi city of Zumar at a US military base in northeastern Syria. Iraqi security forces say a rocket launcher was parked in the back of a delivery truck in the border town with Syria.
A search was launched for the perpetrators, who fled in another vehicle, said a security officer stationed in the town of Zumar. The attack came a day after an explosion at a military base in Iraq that killed a member of the Iraqi security forces on Saturday.
It is the first major attack after several weeks of calm. In the winter, against the background of the war between Israel and the radical Islamic Hamas, pro-Iranian armed groups carried out dozens of air strikes with drones and rockets against US soldiers stationed in the Middle East. There are around 2,500 US soldiers stationed in Iraq and around 900 in Syria.
The Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah says it shot down an Israeli drone that was on a combat mission in Lebanon. The drone that crashed over southern Lebanon “carried out its attacks on our steadfast people,” the militia said in a statement.